With two winners each, Overanalyze and Awesome Patriot rank first and second on the nascent 2017 freshman sire list by earnings. Both have a chance to add to their totals this week at Belmont Park, as the track cards the $150,000 Tremont Stakes and the $150,000 Astoria Stakes for fillies, the first juvenile stakes of the year on the lucrative circuit.

This spring has been a major one in making the careers of young stallions whose first foals are the 3-year-olds of 2017.

First, Always Dreaming, from the first crop of classic-placed Grade 1 winner Bodemeister, captured the Kentucky Derby. Two weeks later, Cloud Computing struck in the Preakness Stakes for Maclean’s Music, the brilliant winner of his only start.

The big-book era of Thoroughbred breeding has transformed the always competitive stallion market from gentlemanly to savagely Darwinian. Young stallions, no matter their racecourse accomplishments, are quickly sold off to other markets if their first progeny do not shine immediately and book size falls.

Thoroughbred racing is a sport with no offseason, no time to rest on one’s laurels. That’s why Chad Brown was on a plane back to his barn at Belmont Park just hours after saddling his first classic winner, Preakness Stakes winner Cloud Computing. Meanwhile, Mike Ryan, whom Brown credited with discovering Cloud Computing, was hard at work back in Maryland, looking for the next star.

Tiz a Slam

Tiznow-Flaming Rose, by Grand Slam

(Bred in Ontario by Chiefswood Stables Ltd.)

Tiz a Slam carries the banner as a homebred for the Krembil family’s Chiefswood Stables.

Grade 1 winner Hit It a Bomb will shuttle to Haras Firmamento in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the upcoming Southern Hemisphere breeding season.

The 4-year-old son of War Front is completing his debut season at Spendthrift Farm in Lexington, Ky., where he stands for an advertised fee of $7,000. He will enter quarantine next month before being shipped to Argentina.

Hit It a Bomb was initially slated to stand the Southern Hemisphere season at Spendthrift’s Australian base, but the deal to redirect him to South America was announced earlier this month.

If Arrogate adds the Pacific Classic and Breeders’ Cup Classic to his victories in the Pegasus Gold Cup and Dubai World Cup, his sire, Unbridled’s Song, is assured of a posthumous first North American sire championship. The reigning three-time champion sire Tapit is not going down without a fight, however.

Cupid’s victory in the Gold Cup at Santa Anita last Saturday was an important one, both for himself and his sire.

Cupid, who races for Coolmore, earned his first Grade 1 victory in the race, an important checkmark toward commercial viability as a stallion prospect. He also posted the first Grade 1 victory of the season for North America’s three-time reigning leading sire, Tapit, who has found himself in an unfamiliar position.

Guy Caballero

Quality Road-Dixie Chicken, by Rahy

(Bred in Ontario by Sean and Dorothy Fitzhenry)

Guy Caballero is a multigenerational member of Sean and Dorothy Fitzhenry’s breeding program, tracing back to the gelding’s second dam, the winning Affirmed mare Minnie’s Meadow.

Dixie Chicken was the most successful of Minnie’s Meadow’s three winners from six runners, winning four races at distances between a mile and 1 1/16 miles. She also finished third in the 2010 Ontario Colleen Stakes at a mile.

The road to breeding a classic winner rarely runs in a straight line, as evidenced by Quick Temper, the dam of Preakness Stakes winner Cloud Computing.

The A.P. Indy mare was bred in Kentucky by John G. Sikura’s Hill ‘n’ Dale Farm and John Franks and was sold as a weanling for $290,000 at the 2001 Keeneland November breeding stock sale.

Quick Temper ended up in the hands of owner Mark Stanley, who campaigned her to a runner-up finish in the Grade 2 Silverbulletday Stakes at Fair Grounds in her fourth start and eventually rolled her back into a nice allowance horse.